Philosophy: ecology, connections, and life.

“Who are you and why are you here?” – the questions; introductions as we stood at the trailhead, primitive tools strewn neatly upon the moist dirt before us.

I’m Justin Whitaker. I’m a life-long Montanan. I studied philosophy at UM-Missoula and earned an MA in Religious Studies (Buddhist Studies) from Bristol, UK. Now I’m here again in Montana, studying philosophy, trying to make up for my woeful ignorance about the state I’ve grown up in. I’ve lived amongst these woods, climbed these mountains here and there; but my mind and heart have always been elsewhere. I’m here to see for the first time what has always surrounded me.

The urge of spirituality, religion done properly, is a reconnection to something greater than oneself in reality. Our Ecology class is much about just this pursuit. Of course it moves in directions seemingly directly opposed to those which I have pursued so far in life: away from people and into the wild.

“In the wild, the senses come alive,” they say. Fear for one’s life, knowing that here you too are prey, and that this land will outlive us all are all supposed to awaken new energies within, hieghten awareness, and breathe life into a relationship with the earth that our ancestors (supposing we have European ancestors) abandoned long ago.

“Food never tastes so good as it does deep in the back-country.” Food, this life-giving substance with which we engage our whole body, our whole being, all five bodily senses is transformed by wildness. Eating here, far from civilization, we share our meal with mountain lions and grizzlies, with field mice and lady-bugs, with deer and skunks, with the trees and grass.

Here, away from humanity, we feel connected with a past that had been denied to us, a time when people lived as part of nature, not apart from it. Connected to that history we find peace. We see the smallness of ourselves, our problems, our selfish desires in the grand scheme of the earth and time.

“In one to three words, what is wilderness?”

“Home,” says one.

“Peace,” says another.

“Sublime mystery.”